You are here

Obama: Anti-typical African President

Obama's success means repudiation not only of White Supremacy, but also of Black African leadership incompetence. Every blow Obama struck against racism was also seen as a hit against African tyranny. Africans see President Elect Obama as the type of president that African countries need and will eventually get.

[Global: Comment On Obama And Africa]

Black people all over the world celebrated the election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States for many reasons; of which the most important is that it repudiates once and for all the myth of Black inferiority relative to the White race, which has been propagated in media for centuries.

Obama's success embodies the hopes, the dreams, and the aspirations of every Black person in the world much as was the case when Nelson Mandela outlasted apartheid racism, was released from nearly three decades of confinement, and became the first president of a democratic South Africa.

For years, Mandela's captivity by the racist apartheid regime felt like a dagger in the hearts of Black people and non-Blacks opposed to racism and global White supremacist ideology. Increasingly, most Black people felt that they were also personally serving prison time with the great South African. Mandela's ascension as president of South Africa, and the repudiation of apartheid, in theory if not in fact, was an affirmation of Black dignity everywhere.

So is it with the election of Barack Obama.

That a Black man could devise a strategy and campaign and convince a majority-White country to elect him president is the essence of affirmation of Black pride, dignity, and ingenuity.

Every Black person had a stake in Obama's campaign; all feel that his success is also their success, including Black Republicans in the United States.

On the African continent, Obama's victory has an even more special resonance, not only for the reason that his father hailed from Kenya.

African leadership, generally speaking, has failed to deliver in the post-Colonial era. There have been only a handful of presidents, apart from Mandela, whose memory and legacy Africans can look back fondly at: including, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius K. Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Samora Machel, Agostino Neto, Sekou Toure, and Kenneth Kaunda.

So through the years, as these despots and charlatans ruined African countries, they also helped affirm White Supremacist propaganda, that African people were innately incapable of leadership or handling the affairs of nation states. Regardless of the fact that in almost every instance --most definitely in the cases of Amin, Bokassa, Mobuttu and Museveni-- these despots humiliating Africans and the entire Black Diaspora were all maintained by White political and corporate interests in Washington, Paris, and London.

Yet at the end of the day, no one could hide the fact that Africans were presiding over destruction and ruin. So, ordinary Africans had to share in the shame produced by these "leaders," whom, in many cases, they had never even voted for.

One can then understand and appreciate the special meaning of Barack Obama's success for Africans and the wild euphoric celebrations on the continent. In Obama, ordinary Africans see evidence of the best in what Africa can offer to the world, when freed of the shackles of global Supremacist propaganda and despotic leadership at home.

Obama's success means repudiation not only of White Supremacy, but also of Black African leadership incompetence.

Every blow Obama struck against racism was also seen as a hit against African tyranny. Africans see President Elect Obama as the type of president that African countries need and will eventually get.